quarantine

May 10, 2020

10 May 2020

A quarantine is a period of isolation, especially one necessitated to stop or slow the transmission of a disease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) differentiates the word from isolation:

Isolation and quarantine help protect the public by preventing exposure to people who have or may have a contagious disease.
Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick.
Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.

Quarantine comes to English from medieval Latin, both directly and via French and Italian. The medieval Latin quarentena is a variation of the classical Latin quadraginta, meaning the number forty. Quarentena had a number of senses dating from the twelfth century in Anglo-Latin texts, all relating to measurements involving the number forty. It could mean a furlong (i.e., 40 rods) in length or an area measuring a furlong on all four sides (roughly ten acres). Or in could refer to a period of forty days in various religious, legal, or diplomatic contexts. It could also refer to the location in the wilderness where Christ fasted for forty days and nights.

This last sense is the one used in quarantine’s first appearance in English that is recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary. From the description of Jerusalem in the Itineraries of William Wey, c. 1470, found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl 565:

By yonde ys a wyldernys of quaren tyne,
Wher Cryst wyth fastyng hys body dyd pyne.
(Beyond is a wilderness of quarantine,
Where Christ with fasting his body did pine.)

Quarantine’s connection with disease probably comes to us via Italian, specifically from Venice, where, in the early fourteenth century, ships from plague-ridden ports were required to ride at anchor for forty days before putting into the port. This sense appears in English by 1649, when the newspaper the Moderate Intelligencer published this report from Toulon:

Our Gallyes which were upon the point of finishing their Quarantaine, and entering into this Port, have been hindred from it by th'arrival of three others that were out a roaming.

In less than fifteen years, the word had lost its specific association with forty days, as recorded by Samuel Pepys in his Diary of 26 November 1663:

The plague, it seems, grows more and more at Amsterdam; and we are going upon making of all ships coming from thence and Hambrough, or any other infected places, to perform their Quarantine (for 30 days as Sir Rd. Browne expressed it in the order of the Council, contrary to the import of the word; though in the general acceptation, it signifies now the thing, not the time spent in doing it) in Holehaven, a thing never done by us before.

The verb to quarantine appears in the early nineteenth century.

In current use, quarantine is also used in politics to refer to a diplomatic or economic isolation of a country. This sense appears as early as 1891, when France severed diplomatic ties with Bulgaria, as reported by the New York Times on 16 December of that year:

The future will throw light on the question of how the rupture will affect Bulgaria and those in power at Sofia. When a great power establishes diplomatic quarantine against them it is well not to go too far on a course on which they appear to be embarking with a light heart.

More famously, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “Quarantine Speech” on 5 October 1937 in which he advocated for strong but unspecified, presumably economic, action against unspecified aggressor nations, presumably Germany, Italy, and Japan. Roosevelt did not specifically label those actions as a quarantine, instead he used a medical metaphor:

It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. And mark this well: When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease. It is my determination to pursue a policy of peace and to adopt every practicable measure to avoid involvement in war.

As reported by the New York Times the following day:

Nobody at the State Department today professed to know what the President meant in his Chicago speech by suggesting an isolation of the world’s treaty-breakers by “quarantine,” or by his offer to join “positive efforts to preserve peace.”

On 22 October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy used the word with more specificity in his announcement of a naval blockade of Cuba:

To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

The word is also used in computing to refer to isolating a computer virus, as in this 21 March 1988 use in the journal InfoWorld:

Also included is Canary, a “quarantine” program for use as a sample to test for a virus by pairing it with new or suspect programs.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. quarentena.

Middle English Dictionary, 2018, s.v. quarentine.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2007, s.v. quarantine, n. and quarantine, v.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Quarantine and Isolation.”29 September 2017.

Photo credit: NASA.

apron strings, tied to

May 9, 2020

Cover page of sheet music for “Your Mother’s Apron String,” a song by John Hogarth Lozier, 1891

9 May 2020

To be tied to someone’s apron strings is a metaphor for being unduly attached to or dominated by a woman, and it connotes immaturity, foolishness, and impotence. The metaphor is rather obvious, since traditionally it would be a woman who wore an apron.

The phrase dates to at least 1791 when it appears in George Colman’s play The Jealous Wife. In the opening scene, the character of Mrs. Oakly accuses her husband of being unfaithful with a number of women, and he replies:

Oons! madam, the grand Turk himself has not half so many mistresses.— You throw me out of all patience— Do I know any body but our common friends?— Am I visited by any body that does not visit you?— Do I ever go out, unless you go with me?— And am I not as constantly by your side as if I was tied to your apron-strings?

Colman’s use is in the sense of literal proximity. But by 1823 the sense of the phrase we’re familiar with today was in place. From the Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany of July of that year:

The doating gowk, aye seen to hing
Tied to his dearie’s apron string.

There are, however, some older uses of apron-string to refer to women and that hint at their dominance over some men. An apron-string hold/tenure is when a man controls a property owned by his wife but only during her lifetime. Nathaniel Ward in his 1647 The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America writes:

I have observed men to have two kindes of Wills, a Free-hold will, such as men hold in Capite of themselves; or a Copy-hold will, held at the will of other Lords or Ladies. [...] And I am sure, a King cannot hold by Copy, at the will of other Lords; the Law calls that base tenure, inconsistent with Royalty; much more base is it, to hold at the will of Ladies: Apron-string tenure is very weak, tyed but of a slipping knot, which a childe may undoe, much more a King. It stands not with our Queens honour to weare an Apron, much lesse her Husband, in the strings; that were to insnare both him and her self in many unsafeties. I never heard our King was Effeminate: to be a little Uxorious personally, is a vertuous vice in Oeconomicks; but Royally, a vitious vertue in Politicks.

And there is William Ellis’s use of the term in his 1744 Modern Husbandman which equates having an apron-string tenure with foolishness:

There may happen some particular Cases, which may oblige a Person to transplant Trees even in Summer-time; as when he is forced to remove them in that Season, or must destroy his Fruit-Trees, if he cannot carry them away, and transplant them safely in another place; which very likely would answer better than what one of my Neighbours did, who, being possessed of a House and large Orchard by Apron-string-hold, felled almost all his Fruit-Trees, because he every Day expected the Death of his sick Wife.

Richard Brathwaite in his 1640 Ar’t asleepe husband? writes:

For a kind natur'd wench will see light thorow a small hole; yea, and with twirling of their Apron-string, have as ready an answer, if at any time taken napping.

And there is this, from the anonymous 1649 play The Rebellion of Naples or the Tragedy of Massenello, in which the main character Tomaso is speaking to his wife:

Now the hand of providence hath cal'd me to hold the Scales of Justice; now, to be President of a Councel of State; by and by, President of a Councel of War: Do you think Women are sit Creatures to be consulted with? Must the affairs of State hang upon an apron-string? Look to your dishes, and see that your rooms be well swept, and never think to teach Tomaso what he hath to do.

And a century earlier, Nicholas Udall in his 1542 translation of Erasmus’s Apophthegmes, includes a note in which he equates a mother’s apron string with foolishness and stupidity, perhaps a metaphor of an immature child:

euen of old antiquitee dawcockes, lowtes, cockescombes & blockheaded fooles, were in a prouerbial speaking said: Betizare, to be werishe & vnsauery as Beetes. Plautus in his comedie entitled Truculentes, saith: Blitea est meretrix, it is a pekish [i.e., foolish] whore, & as we say in english, As wise as a gooce, or as wise as her mothers aperen string. So a feloe that hath in him no witte, no quickenesse, but is euen as one hauing neither life ne soule, Laberius calleth Bliteam belluam, a best made of Beetes.

So. the phrase tied to apron strings dates to at least the eighteenth century, although it may be older in oral use. And the association of apron strings with female power is much older.

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Sources:

Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. apron-strings, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. apron-string, n.

Photo credit: New York Public Library.

social distance

May 8, 2020

Social distancing at a London supermarket, 30 March 2020.

8 May 2020

The phrase social distance has three distinct meanings. The oldest is used today mainly in the social sciences to refer to differences in social class; the distance here is metaphorical. This sense dates to the early nineteenth century, with the oldest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary being in an 1830 translation of L. A. F. De Bourrienne’s Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte:

Here terminated my connexion with Bonaparte as a comrade and equal [...] His position placed too great a social distance between him and me, not to make me feel the necessity of fashioning my demeanor accordingly.

About a century later, the phrase began to be used to denote a measure of literal distance, in this case the separation typically maintained between people in person-to-person interactions. This sense is often used in psychological and etiquettical contexts. From the 4 November 1935 theater review in the Times (London):

Miss Tempest at a bridge table significantly watches her husband's embarrassed attempts to maintain a safe social distance between himself and his possessive admirer.

The third sense is also one of physical separation, but it is used in the context of controlling the spread of a contagious disease. The earliest citation of this sense that I can find is from November 2004 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. There may be antedatings to be found, but the quotation marks around the phrase indicate that the use in this context is new or unfamiliar to the author and editors:

The 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a modern example of containing a global epidemic through traditional or nonmedical public health interventions. The interventions included finding and isolating patients; quarantining contacts; measures to “increase social distance,” such as canceling mass gatherings and closing schools; recommending that the public augment personal hygiene and wear masks; and limiting the spread of infection by domestic and international travelers, by issuing travel advisories and screening travelers at borders.

And the next month there is social distancing from the December 2004 issue of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science:

The emotional reactions to social distancing were reported as fear, isolation, loneliness, depression, insomnia, and anxiety, but boredom was specifically cited as the greatest emotional disincentive to compliance with quarantine.

This sense of social distance appears outside of the public health community about a year later on 30 October 2005 in the New York Times.

Dr. Matthew Cartter [sic], the epidemiology program coordinator for the public health department, said his agency has actually been preparing for a pandemic since the 1990's. He said there are not enough hospital beds in the state should a pandemic occur. If officials instead call quarantines "increasing social distance" or "community shielding," will residents be more willing to participate in them? Probably, he said.

So while most English-speakers became familiar with social distancing during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the use of the term in public health circles is much older.

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Sources:

Bell, David M., et al. “Public Health Interventions and SARS Spread, 2003.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, 10.11, November 2004, 1900–06.

DiGiovanni, Clete, et al. “Factors Influencing Compliance with Quarantine in Toronto During the 2003 SARS Outbreak. Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, 2.4, December 2004, 265–72.

Gordon, Jane. “Just in Case: Planning for an Avian Flu Outbreak.” New York Times, 30 October 2005, Q3.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. social distance, n.

Photo credit: Philafrenzy, 2020, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

zero gravity / zero g / microgravity

March 24, 2020

28 July 2014

Zero gravity is one of those words that appears in science fiction before science and engineering had an actual need for it. Zero gravity, also called zero g or microgravity, is the state of weightlessness experienced in outer space (and, as we shall see, at the center of the earth).

The term is much older than you might expect. It first appears back in 1938 in the story “If Science Reached Earth’s Core,” in the October issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories:

Starting at the zero-gravity of earth’s core, accumulative acceleration is easily built up in a four-thousand-mile tube.

Since gravity is the attraction between two masses, if we could go to the center of the earth, we would feel no pull from the earth’s mass. The planet’s mass would surround us, and the pulls in all different directions would cancel each other out—we would be at zero-gravity.

For spacecraft in orbit, the mechanism is different, but the effect is the same. In earth orbit, the planet’s gravity is still tugging at a spacecraft, but the craft is traveling fast enough that it “falls around” the earth. The craft’s forward motion cancels out the effect of the earth’s gravity and things and people float.

The shorter zero g dates to 1952 and Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Islands in the Sky:

She was escorted by an elderly woman who seemed quite at home under zero “g” and gave Linda a helpful push when she showed signs of being stuck.

The abbreviation G or g is standard physics notation for the force of gravity and has been in use since at least 1785.

Today, space scientists tend to use the term microgravity to describe most real-world zero-gravity situations. In orbit, the effects of earth’s gravity are not completely cancelled out, and other astronomical bodies, notably the moon and the sun, will exert some, albeit very weak, gravitational influence. These minute gravitational forces are not technically “zero,” so the term microgravity is substituted. Use of microgravity dates to the Skylab missions. From the February 14, 1975 issue of Science:

The experiments chosen to fly on the various Skylab missions are best characterized as a mixed bag of studies designed to observe the effect of microgravity on a variety of phenomena.

Sources:

“G, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989.

“microgravity, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2001.

“zero-g, zero-gee n.,” “zero gravity n.,” Prucher Jeff, Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, 2007.

yodel

March 24, 2020

9 June 2018

Yodeling is associated with Alps, so it’s no surprise that the English word is borrowed from German. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb to yodel as “to sing or call using a distinctive style of vocalization characterized by repeated rapid alternations of pitch between the low chest voice and the high falsetto or head voice.” The German verb jodeln dates to at least the eighteenth century, and the older Middle High German jolen meant to sing loudly and wildly.

The verb makes its way into English by 1838 in reference to Alpine yodeling. There is this from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1839 novel Hyperion:

Far above, in the clear, cloudless heaven, the white forehead of the Jungfrau blushed at the last kiss of the departing sun. It was a glorious Transfiguration of Nature! And when the village bells began to ring, and a single voice at a great distance was heard yodling forth a ballad, it rather broke than increased the enchantment of a scene, where silence was more musical than sound.

(The OED classifies this citation under the sense for musical yodeling, undoubtedly due to Longfellow’s use of ballad, but the context is distinctly that of an Alpine shout, not a song.)

And by 1847, the verb was being used in other contexts, especially music, referring to any shout or song that fluctuated in pitch like Alpine yodeling. The noun appears in English by 1841.

Yodeling is often a feature of American country music. This tradition was introduced by Jimmie Rodgers who from 1927–33 recorded a series of songs titled Blue Yodel. As a result, the term blue yodel is sometimes used to differentiate this American musical tradition from the Alpine one, as in this example from the Journal of American Folklore in 1972:

Here, backed by Washboard Doc and Benny Wade Jefferson (Blind Lemon’s nephew), he displays his retention of the “down home” sound. “My Baby Left Me” has definite “blue yodel” implications in the guitar backing.

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition, September 2016, s. v. yodel, v. and yodel, n.

Wilgus, D. K. “From the Record Review Editor: Afro-American Tradition.” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 85, No. 335, Jan–Mar 1972, pp. 99–107 at 105.